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Effective long-range attraction of moiré excitons under the influence of atomic reconstructions and anisotropic screening

Nils-Erik Schütte1,*, Carl Emil Mørch Nielsen2, Niclas Götting1, Alexander Steinhoff1, Gabriel Bester2, and Christopher Gies1

  • *Contact author: nils-erik.schuette@uol.de
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Phys. Rev. B 114, 065417 – Published 16 July, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/mvpg-r83h

Abstract

The moiré pattern, which emerges due to a relative rotation between two monolayers of transition metal dichalcogenides, features a long lattice period for small twist angles. The resulting band-structure modulation acts as an effective potential for interlayer excitons, which can realize correlated many-body phenomena. Here, we aim for a material-realistic modeling of the interlayer exciton-exciton interaction, taking into account lattice reconstructions and an exciton-exciton potential that incorporates the highly anisotropic screening imposed by the two-dimensional bilayer and the dielectric background. We find strong modifications of the on-site interaction induced by the change of the moiré potential during lattice reconstructions, while for long-range interactions on the length scale of the moiré period, anisotropic dielectric screening leads to a crossover from a repulsive to an attractive interaction. The interaction potential and hopping amplitudes serve as parameters for a Bose-Hubbard model on the moiré lattice, which we use to explain the correlated behavior of interlayer excitons.

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Phys. Rev. B 114, 065417– Published 16 July, 2026
  • Received 21 April 2026
  • Revised 15 June 2026
  • Accepted 16 June 2026
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